Religion and the Gospel

And there it is. The part that I cannot get right. The part that I fight so hard against, knowingly or not. The very difference between Christianity and other religions. The difference between following Christ, putting Him at the center of my life, obeying out of love and a changed heart – the difference between that and a Christian “religion”.

All religion is the process of earning your right to be in heaven or personally attaining nirvana or enlightenment. And this includes the pharisaically perverted version of Christianity. The author distinguishes the Gospel from other religions and rightly so. It is different. Your good and bad deeds are not used to reward or punish you. We deserve punishment, but it has already been meted out and hence there is no need to continue trying to earn rewards and escape punishment. It’s been done. The price paid the goal achieved.

Some would say… then why be good? No, it’s not out of fear of death and the devil and hell. Those all have been defeated. We should want to be good out of respect and love and obedience to the one who made us and the one who saved us.

And that’s where I go horribly wrong. I cannot do anything right. I still do evil. I have awful thoughts and behave quite contrary to what I profess. And it is not because I am ignorant. I know what I do is wrong… Sometimes I forget… Sometimes I simply don’t care. I… don’t… care… at… all. Why would I be like that? Heck… I might even be deliberate. Strike that… I can be deliberate. I am deliberate. I am a stubborn, rebellious child. It is second nature. I’ve done it for so long. And sometimes when I try especially hard… I fail even harder.

I can make excuses till Christ returns. I can give explanations until the cows come home.

But see, I can also be “good”. I can serve and love and care and be generous. I can sacrifice and I can even hold my tongue. I can pray even though it is not my strongest point. But do you also notice the “I”? The “I can” and “I do” and “I am”? And what am I doing it for? Sometimes I exhaust myself so hard trying to… earn my right to heaven. Earn my right to fit in. Earn my right to belong. Earn my right to have friends. Earn my right to be noticed. Ugh!

Sometimes I really enjoy “serving” and I start to worry that it doesn’t “count”. Count for what? Am I still trying to keep score? No, I am worried that God sees my heart and I am doing it for the wrong reason… Am I doing it for the wrong reason? Is at least a part of it for the right reason?

So I am the righteous prig and the sinner simultaneously. I fear I have been working on this problem for a very, very, very long time – to no avail.

But I am beginning to understand that “I” am working on it. Alone. And I haven’t been accepting help. And the best place to go is to the One I have been avoiding recently. I had been thinking I was angry at Him. But perhaps I am angry at myself (certainly at others) but mainly myself for not getting it right after all these years. I’m not gonna get it right until I let myself go… I don’t need religion. I need more of the Gospel.

(How did today’s sermon manage to sync perfectly with this chapter that I have put off for so long…?)

            For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

            So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

(Romans 7:15-25 ESV)